Regaining Weight Helped With More Carbohydrates

ADVICE

Q. My cholesterol count was so high my doctor decided to put me on a very low-fat diet. I succeeded in lowering my cholesterol dramatically, but along the way I lost a lot of weight. I needed to lose some, but now I`m having trouble keeping my weight up. What should I do?

A. In two words: Rediscover carbohydrates. Over the years, carbohydrate-rich foods have gained an undeserved reputation as cheap and fattening. But the fact is that gram for gram they contain less than half as many calories as fat.

Now that you have lost more weight than is desirable, it is time to make a conscious effort to increase the low-fat foods in your diet. How you do it will depend on your own food preferences. For example, you may find that you would enjoy having more bread than you have been accustomed to eating. At breakfast, you could have a slice or two of a good whole-grain loaf, along with some juice and cereal with skim milk. You could have another slice at dinner. And don`t forget about good, thick soups. Many recipes using dried beans, lentils or barley, especially those found in vegetarian cookbooks, can be adapted to fit into a low-fat diet.

You also can eat more generous servings of foods such as pasta and noodles. Even without much fat, you can prepare tasty sauces to season them. A delicious example is low-fat yogurt spiced with curry powder. Similarly, you can enjoy larger servings of rice and barley. Try pilaf, prepared by baking either grain in the oven with chicken broth. If you want to use just a bit of the fat allowed on your diet, you can enhance either one by sauteeing some minced onion and mushrooms in oil to add to the mixture.

Finally, as long as you have not been advised to restrict your intake of simple sugars, there are several desserts for you to indulge in from time to time. These include angel cake, sorbet, gelatin and meringues. Indeed, setting aside concern about fat, we think that a scoop of good fruit sorbet served on a meringue shell and topped with raspberry puree is an elegant enough dessert for any festive occasion.

Q. I happened to read the label on a can of tuna fish and noticed that it contained an additive called pyrophosphate. What purpose does it serve?

A. Some years ago, when you opened a can of tuna or shrimp, it was not uncommon to find clear crystals that might have been mistaken for glass. The crystals were actually a chemical compound called magnesium ammonium sulfate. Struvite, as it was called, formed naturally during processing and was not harmful. But consumers did not welcome it in their canned fish. After considerable research, the food industry identified pyrophosphate as an additive that could effectively prevent struvite formation.

Q. A friend told me that she has not bought extra-lean beef for several years because she read that regular beef, which starts out much higher in fat, after cooking contains no more fat than the leaner type. Is that right?

A. Those were indeed the findings of a study conducted by food technologists at the Department of Agriculture`s Meat Science Laboratory in Beltsville, Md., some years ago. After cooking, the weight of both types of patties was the same, but the explanation for the loss differed. Higher-fat beef patties, which were found to be juicier and tastier than the lean beef, lost more fat. The extra-lean patties lost more water.

Because the ground beef in this experiment was cooked in patties, the fat could be discarded easily. If you are concerned about fat intake and cost, and use the higher-fat ground beef in mixed dishes, you will want to pay extra attention to technique. Make sure to cook and drain the beef before adding it to a mixture such as spaghetti sauce or chili con carne. Precook and drain small meatballs before adding them to a sauce, or periodically drain off the fat as a meat loaf cooks.

Have a consumer-oriented question? Dr. Jean Mayer and Jeanne Goldberg, a registered dietitian, are affiliated with Tufts University. Write to them at Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St. Northwest, Washington, D.C. 20071.